Interpreting the Sindhi World

Essays on Society and History

Edited by Michel Boivin and Matthew A. Cook

This book seeks to unite the wide community of scholars who work on Sindh and with Sindhis. It includes work on all geographic regions in which Sindhis live to describe the diversity of Sindh's 'voices.' The collection raises questions about how these voices are socially and historically defined and how they contribute to the world's globalization.

Interpreting the Sindhi World

Essays on Society and History

Edited by Michel Boivin and Matthew A. Cook

Description

Interpreting the Sindhi World seeks to unite the wide community of scholars who work on Sindh and with Sindhis. The book's interdisciplinary focus is on history and society, and represents a 'snap shot' of contemporary research from different disciplines and locations. Combining interdisciplinary and multi-local approaches, it describes the diversity of Sindh's 'voices' and raises questions about how they are historically and socio-culturally defined.

Conventional studies of Sindh and Sindhis often bend the region and its people upon themselves to analyze society and history. This collection of essays treats Sindh and its people not as isolated regional entities, but rather entries in a wider socio-cultural and historical web. Sindhis are a global
community and this collection generates new perspectives on them by integrating detailed studies on Pakistan with those from India and the Diaspora. Such an approach contrasts with other writings by celebrating rather than erasing multi-cultural faces from Sindh's human tapestry. By rethreading unheard socio-cultural and historical voices into understanding Sindh and its people, Interpreting the Sindhi World disputes the vision of Sindhis as a monolithic population in Pakistan.

Interpreting the Sindhi World

Essays on Society and History

Edited by Michel Boivin and Matthew A. Cook

Author Information

Michel Boivin is a historian. He is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Indian and South Asian Studies (CEIAS), National Centre for Scientific Research, affiliated with the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) as a member of the CEIAS, and is also a Fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). A specialist of the Muslims of South Asia, his research is focused on the interaction between society and religion during the 19th and 20th centuries, with a special interest in the Sindhi region, a geographical area straddling Pakistan and India. He is currently heading a CEIAS research team on History and Sufism in the Indus Valley and an interdisciplinary project on the Sufi center of Sehwan Sharif (South Pakistan).

MatthewA. Cook is Assistant Professor of Postcolonial and South Asian Studies at North Carolina Central University, and is also affiliated with the North Carolina Center for South Asia Studies at Duke University. His past teaching appointments include: North Carolina State University, New York University, Columbia University, Hofstra University, and Duke University. His research focus is on colonialism in South Asia and the methodological conjunction of anthropology and history. He has authored book chapters, journal articles and reviews published by Eastern Anthropologist, Sagar, Columbia Journal of Historiography, Columbia Historical Review, Educational Practice and Theory, Curriculum and Teaching, South Asian Review and Pacific Affairs, Itinerario, and others.

Contributors:

Maya Khemlani David, Professor of Languages and Lingusitics, University of Malaya, MalaysiaPaulo Lemos Horta, Assistant Professor of Literature, New York University, Abu DhabiFarhana Ibrahim, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Indian Institute of Technology, DelhiRita Kothari, Professor of Culture and Communication, Mudra Institute of Communications, IndiaLata Parwani, Ph.D. candidate of History, Tufts University Steven Ramey, Assistant Professor of Religion, University of AlabamaOskar Verkaaik, Assistant Professor, Research Centre for Religion and Society, University of Amsterdam, NetherlandsVazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zaminar, Assistant Professor of the Humanities, Brown University